Unremarried Widow (Henderson) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
1. Early in the book, we learn that Artis’s father was a pilot, just like Miles, and that he too was killed in a crash. The first time Artis’s mother meets Miles, she tells Artis he is just like her father. How do you see Artis’s family history affecting the decisions she makes? How do you think that knowledge and those memories influenced how she felt about getting involved with a pilot?

2. “What if you love someone with all your heart but you’re afraid that being with him means giving up the life you imagined for yourself?” (p. 88) Artis asks when she’s trying to figure out how to make a life with Miles. Later, when she pitches a relationship column to Florida Weekly, she admits she’s interested in “how to negotiate the terrain between what we want from life and what we want from a partner” (p. 220). How do you see this central question play out throughout the book? How do the other people in the story, especially those connected to the army, struggle with or resolve this tension?

3. Miles grew up in Texas, which is portrayed in the book as dry, dusty, and hot. Instead of staying in Texas while Miles deploys, Artis goes to Florida, her home, which feels lush and verdant. How does the author use the distinctive settings to cast light on how place affects the story? What other settings in the book does she describe, and how does that affect what happens there?

4. While Miles is stationed in Iraq, he tells Artis a story about going running one day. On the way back, he sees another solider ahead of him and decides to race him to camp. It is only once they’re back to camp safely that he realizes a sandstorm had blown up behind him; he has just outrun a sandstorm. Do you see this image as a metaphor for anything else in the book?

5. Artis never imagined marrying into the military, and she tries to separate herself from military life, never really fitting in with the other army wives or with Miles’s co-workers at the Officer’s Club. After Miles deploys, she moves to Florida and even talks about buying a house there to be their permanent home, removed from whatever base Miles will be sent to next. How else do you see Artis’s longing for distance play out in the story? What do you make of the fact that Artis eventually finds community and healing at the TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar?

6. Artis says that often women just know when something bad has happened to their husband (p. 127). Have you ever experienced a similar feeling of certainty about something happening far away? What do you think might be behind it?

7. Teresa Priestner is not satisfied with the information she is given about the helicopter crash that killed her husband and Miles, and she spends the rest of the book trying to prove that John deserves a Purple Heart. Artis, on the other hand, believes that their husbands are gone, and it doesn’t matter exactly how it happened (p. 169). What do these different attitudes reveal about how each woman deals with her grief? How do you think the differences in their lives might have influenced how they processed their husbands’ deaths?

8. Think about the different types of dreams that occur in the book—Miles’s startlingly prescient dream about the crash that opens the book (p. 10); the dream about the house Artis and Miles hoped to buy in Texas (p. 94); the dream in which Miles tells her that death itself is like a dream (p. 189). Do you think Artis believes it? How are these dreams different from one another, and how do they tie elements of the story together?

9. After Miles’s death, Artis admits that she feels angry at many people, but especially at her mother, “whose fate, despite my best efforts, I now shared.” (p. 132) Her relationship with Miles’s mother starts out rocky, but after his death, they are drawn together by their shared grief. What do these different responses reveal something about each of these women? How do you see Artis struggling to navigate the complicated territory of familial relationships?

10. In the beginning of the story, Artis consults a psychic, who gives her specific predictions Artis simply can’t imagine coming true (which, of course, do). Later in the story, she sees the psychic again, and is given more unbelievable predictions, at least one of which—seeing her name in print—has obviously come true. Do you believe in psychics? What do you make of the fact that her predictions were correct? Is there anything the psychic got wrong? Do you believe these predictions can be in any way self-fulfilling? Why or why not? What does the act of consulting a psychic reveal about Artis’s deep desires?

11. “Losing a spouse is in no way like losing a child, but all loss is in some way like losing ourselves.” Discuss this line. What losses have you experienced in your life? Do you agree that loss is like losing yourself? How do you find your way back?

12. There are several ways in which Artis reaches out for—or is reached out to by—the other side: She has dreams where Miles talks to her after he’s gone; she visits a psychic who gives her a message from Miles; she experiences strange phenomena, such as knocking in her house and the microwave turning on in the night, which she thinks might indicate a ghost. “I shook my head, disbelieving,” she writes. “But also believing a little.” (p. 186) What do you make of this? How do you see the barrier between this life and the next? Have you ever experienced similar comfort from beyond? How do you think the author’s belief allows her to experience or recognize it?

13. This story is written about events that happened in the not-too-distant past, and many of the events and trends that she mentions—the Florida real estate bubble that would never burst; the stock market crash of 2007—are written from the perspective of someone who knows how things turns out. How do you think knowing what happens to Miles affects how the author portrays the early stages of their relationship? Are there other elements of the story where you see this?

14. “If you took all the sorrows of the all the people in the world and hung them from a tree like fruit and then you let people choose which one they wanted, we would still pick our own” (p. 241). Do you believe this is true? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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